Page 110 of Cruel Lies

Angel’s words registered slowly, like a nightmare where you’re running through the fog, and you know there’s something on the other end of the distance, but you can’t get to it no matter how hard you try. You just sift through the cotton-like, thick-as-soup fog and hope that you’re gaining ground and just hallucinating.

Rowan swore as I took a turn so fast I smashed him into the other side of the car. "Fuck, man, drive like you have a brain. We’re no good to her dead."

He had a point, but my brain wasn’t registering logic. It didn’t care about anything but finding her, helping her, saving her.

Another gunshot rang out over the speakerphone, and I winced like I’d been shot myself, hoping they had horrid aim. Last time I checked, guns weren’t their thing. They preferred to rape their targets and then make it look like an ‘accident.’ They were the worst of the worst.

And I had no doubt they were working for my father.

He’d get his soon, too. But Harper came first.

I skidded to a stop in front of the damn garage, but there was no one there—the last bay,her bay,sat empty, the door wide open, a worklight still sitting abandoned on the floor.

Fuck.

"She’s not here," I whined, desperation slinking into my veins. It choked me, and for a split second, I turned to the phone just as the line went dead on the other end.

The last sound we heard from it was an ear-piercing scream.

"Drive, dammit, Nash!"Angel screamed at me, his nails sinking into my right arm and drawing blood just as I resigned myself to the idea that she might not survive. Just as the black started to creep in, he drew blood, and the dark red droplets welling up from the tiny wounds shattered my mental breakdown and helped me return to myself.

I couldn’t let the monster run me now. I needed my wits about me to help our girl.

"Where?" I breathed, staring down the many options of an escape route Harper had from the garage.

Rowan leaned forward, but it was Angel who pointed in the direction of the wharf, his eyes seeing something I couldn’t, perhaps.

"She ran for the lights. That’s the closest public street with traffic. Go—we’re not far behind, I’d bet."

The first thing we came across was the wrecked Firebird. The poor cherry red paint job had been scratched to hell on both sides, both driver and passenger doors left open wide, blocking an alley we’d come down because we spotted tire tracks.

Someone had shattered the windshield, and I smiled despite myself.

"She’s a hell of a fighter."A certified junkyard dog, our Harpie girl. Dollars to doughnuts, she did that to buy herself time.

She was smart like that.

Detoured around the Firebird and followed the trail as best we could. Someone—probably the deadly douchebag duo—had knocked over a trashcan, pointing us down the road. A few feet after that, I found a wrench lying on the ground,

At the corner, we lost the trail, so we parked the car and got out.

I saw it first.

Blood.

Blood everywhere.

"Someone took a bullet," I nearly whispered, my heart sinking. "Do you think?—"

Rowan grabbed me by the collar and shook me violently, his eyes filled with the same panic and fear I knew reflected in my own. "I don’t think shit, and you better not, either. Don’t evencontemplateany option that doesn’t involve her being alive at the end of this road."

"Rowan," Angel said cautiously, his hand reaching for Rowan’s shoulder. "We’ve gotta move, man. We’re wasting time."

His nod was wooden and stiff, and I waved them on as I followed the blood on foot, leading the way to our girl—I hoped.Down the sidewalk a bit, I found a discarded wrench, whichhadto be hers.

We were going the right way, at least.

The blood doubled in volume just as the trail hit the main road, and I swore as it ended abruptly at the edge of the sidewalk.

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